Imaginary
by anesthesiadoll
Summary: There's nothing left of the boy with the vivid green eyes. He's just an imaginary figure nowadays, and what's left is the boy who lived in darkness. DARK! One-shot. No slash.


**A/N:** Just a little one shot I happened to write. Meant to be read as an alternative ending to DH where Voldemort realises Harry is a horcrux.

* * *

With all the lights out it seems like nothing is real any longer. He doesn't have to focus on the pain, and he doesn't have to focus on the knowledge that he had failed. In the darkness there is nothing else left than the irregular breathing, the pain and the coldness that seems to have found the bones buried inside his skin.

He wonders if he's going to die soon. He's been wondering about it for some time already.

He can't remember when he last saw the light. Maybe it doesn't even matter in that darkness. Maybe there is no point in light when all is lost.

Sometimes he sees his visions. Sometimes sees the world how it now is: full of war and destruction and pain, pain, pain. He doesn't care anymore. Their pain is nothing compared to the pain he carries inside him.

Sometimes he visits him, mocks him for their loss. He listens to it with dull eyes, lying against the filthy wall. His eyes have lost their previous shine. He listens to his words and knows that every single one of them is true.

He tried to make himself believe that they were lies for such a long time. He tried to make himself believe that he would never tell him the truth, but the visions burned his eyes and the words dug deep under his sallow skin. After a while he knew that he would never lie to him. Every vivid dream he saw was a part of his memories, and his memories didn't lie to him.

The world was in ashes, and the boy who lived was just an imaginary figure. There was nothing left of the boy with the vivid green eyes. He's just an imaginary figure nowadays, and what's left is the boy who lived in darkness.

He had screamed in the beginning. He had screamed when they tortured him, nearly drew him insane with the pain and when he was alone at night, he screamed. Screaming had made him believe that he was alive, but after a while he had stopped.

No one ever answered his screams, and when they echoed in his small cell he would feel trapped. He never screamed anymore, not when his skin was burned, not when his bones were broken. Screaming didn't help him. Screaming didn't stop the pain.

He usually sat against the filthy wall and counted seconds. Sometimes he would fall asleep and awake; sometimes he seemed to stay awake for weeks, months, years. Time didn't matter when there was no point with time. Time was just a meaningless way to pass the moments from cradle to grave. Time had no meaning in his world any longer.

The darkness is his only friend. The darkness was always there, wrapping its arms around his small and fragile body. Darkness was there when he was delirious of fever, and darkness was there when he couldn't fall asleep.

He doesn't know when his eyes stopped seeing anything at all. All he knows now is that the darkness is always there, that nothing changes even when he steps inside his small prison. His fingers know every dent in those walls. His bare feet know every part of the floor, yet he usually sits in the corner, staring at the darkness, his eyes never seeing anything.

He hasn't spoken in a long time, and sometimes he wonders if he ever will speak again.

* * *

He has stopped mocking him. Nowadays when he steps inside his cell, he just stands there a while, and then tells what is happening in the world outside of his prison. He listens, the last embers of hope slowly dying out. He never mocks him anymore. There's no point in it.

He has lost, and they both know it. Now it's only a matter of time before his life has been lived through. Now the darkness holds whispers of the long sleep coming soon, the nightmare ending. He isn't even sure if he will ever fall asleep or if it is just a nightmare. He just is, and nothing more.

He could be a thought. He is nothing more than a thought and a fragile body anymore. The pain may have stopped, but he still feels it sometimes when the darkness suffocates him for long enough. The pain reminds him that he is real. The pain reminds him that he is going to die, and the thought that once would have caused him to scream and yell lifts a small smile upon his lips.

When he sees the smile, he is always silent for a long time. He seems to be wondering about the small smile. It's no wonder really. One of the men in the room never smiles, and the other only smiles when he thinks about his impending death. Death has become an escape. He never was a quitter, not before everything stopped being real.

He can't even remember what his friends would have said. He can picture them inside his mind, but their faces are always hazy. The more he tries to remember them, the less he remembers. It doesn't really bother him, not anymore. He hasn't been touched in what feels like years, and the memories are the only thing that keeps him company. Just the feeling is enough, because he doesn't really feel anything anymore.

The other man watches him, and slowly, he starts to see the change from the hero into that blind boy in a too skinny body.

* * *

"Why do you smile?" the other man asks from him one day. He has been sitting in his corner once again for hours without moving, and he hears the question ringing from the walls. The darkness comforts him and promises that the voice will disappear soon, that soon the silence will come again and wrap around him like a warm blanket. Before it dares to come back, the other man speaks again.

"Obviously you aren't happy in here. No one would be happy this hellhole," the man sneers. He listens to the man's voice. It feels so odd to think that one day they would have killed each other without thinking about it for a single moment. It feels so odd to think about those times when he still knew what light was, what hope was.

The silence returns slowly, carefully. He welcomes it back, holds it in his arms that are limp and weak. He can feel how the other man in the room keeps on staring at him, and he knows that he isn't going to answer the man's question. He hasn't spoken in such a long time. He isn't going to speak anymore. Now it's just him and silence, and nothing can ever break it again.

When he doesn't answer, the other man sighs. The silence is wary, ready to flee the exact moment any words are spoken.

"You're insane. I shouldn't be talking to you. There's no point talking to someone who will never answer."

He leaves the room. The blind boy in the room knows the man is right.

He is insane. He will never answer him.

He smiles for a small while, and the silence becomes his blanket.


End file.
